In the spring of 1940, a 24-year-old girl was busy picking fiddleheads along a logging road in Aleza Lake when a logging truck pulled over and the 28-year-old driver asked her if she wanted to go for a drive.
That was a little more than 70 years ago and last week, Neil and Ethel MacArthur celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary surrounded by friends and family at Simon Fraser Lodge, where Neil shared his secret for being married so long.
"I'm a likeable guy," he said.
During the Aug. 24 celebration, the couple proved they could still drum up some thrills.
"We set the fire alarm off with a sparkler that had a seven and a zero, and it set off the fire alarm in the lodge... so that gave us a little bit of excitement," said Neila Ollinger,the couple's daughter.
It was just one more story to tell in a long life of stories for the pair.
One of the first amusing anecdotes occurred when they first started dating. Neither of them had very much money, so it would sometimes take quite a bit of effort to get together.
Ethel was a cook for a hotel in Aleza Lake when she invited Neil to Sunday dinner one evening. Little did she know that to make it there, Neil had to walk from the lumber mill in Prince George, along the railroad tracks all the way to the hotel, 70 kilometres away.
"It was quite a ways to walk, with wolves and bears," said Neil.
Ethel wrote about another inventive date in a written account of their lives together. "[One day] he invited me to go up to where the logs were loaded and then down to the lake where they were dumped. [It made for] quite an interesting afternoon."
Ollinger said her father was pleased to find out Ethel was so smart after they got to know each other.
"We used to call her our walking encyclopedia," said Ollinger.
Neil was born in Milestone, Saskatchewan and made the trip to Prince George at age 22, in hopes of making more money despite the Depression.
Ethel was born in the first hospital in Prince George called The Island Cache Hospital.
The MacArthurs have spent most of their lives in the Prince George area with their family, except for a brief time spent in Vernon.
"[The family] wanted to stay in Prince George together, so mum and dad moved back to Prince George eight years later," said Ollinger.
The couple's daughters know they are very lucky to have found accommodations for both their parents who, at 98 and 94 years of age, have been staying at Simon Fraser Lodge only since last May, said Ollinger.
"They are very happy with the care they are receiving there and the nursing staff there is so great."
